Ann Althouse:
That headline refers to the results of a test — which I linked to here — used by the Pew Research Center to sort Americans into various groups, like “Young Outsider” and “Business Conservative,” based on their political predilections. If you took the test, you know that you were presented with pairs of statements, both phrased in a fairly extreme and absolute way, and asked, each time, “Which of the following statements comes closest to your view?” You were not allowed to put yourself right in the middle, where I found myself on most questions. You had to tip one way or the other.
The first question, for example, paired “Government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest” and “Government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.” Now, I probably picked the first option there, just because of the difference in the phrasing, with “usually” distorting things for me. The first statement is obviously true, since some regulation is necessary and there’s no quantitative word like “usually.” It really should have been written “Most Government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest” to balance the options. But that’s a criticism of Pew.Â
I really want to criticize The New Republic for it’s disgusting, deceptive headline. The relevant question had this pairing:Which of the following statements comes closest to your view?
Poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return
Poor people have hard lives because government benefits don’t go far enough to help them live decently
I suspect most people would have trouble with both statements, but to say that your view comes closest to the first statement is not to say that you “think the poor ‘have it easy.'” It’s just to reveal that your tendency is to think the government’s safety net is too big or too soft or perhaps that too many people are losing their incentive to strive because benefits create dependency.
I really get tired of push polls, the convoluted questions. and the statistical manipulation they use to influence via their polling results. I have almost completely stopped answering polls, because they rarely give any choice that corresponds to Constitutional Conservatives.
The Pew poll is lying by claiming that Conservatives in general think the poor have it easy. Conservatives do not have any problem whatsoever with helping the poor. It is the greedy, democratic-socialist leeches who are gaming the system (and who are helping to transform America into another failed socialist state,) by selling out their votes to for hand-out and entitlement crazed, spendthrift Democrat oligarchs, who Conservatives don’t like. The homeless, the destitute, and flat-busted (not the Clinton interpretation of “busted”) poor will readily be aided by Conservatives and caring Constitutionalists.
The problem is the lack of a definition of who is ”poor.”
Hillary Clinton claimed to be ”dead broke,” amd having to struggle hard just to pay for housing and education.
But examine her circumstances and she had $10 million the year she was speaking about.
So, most Americans would NOT call her ”poor,” although she did!
Inside the USA there is a real divide between people who are willing to get public assistance and Americans who struggle but refuse that same assistance.
There is also a wide gap between the definition of poor inside the USA vs in the rest of the world.
Recently people who fit into 5 differences in income, from the top quintile (top 20%) to the bottom quintile (lowest earning 20%).
That questionnaire showed that the majority of Americans in that bottom group had cell phones, TVs, refrigerators, heating, housing, food, clothing and so on.
A minority had few or none of these things.
So, the questions:
beg answers about what is ”poor,” what is ”decently” and the idea that being able to do get something (”can get government benefits”) doesn’t mean one WILL get them.
In other words, that is a loaded set of statements.
There is no right answer except to have one’s heart bleed.
Looking at the Political Typology Quiz:, It is an “either” – “or” set of questions that leaves no room for any but the most extreme of viewpoints, which can not possibly give a true measure of where the majority of people actually stand on the issues given. As noted by the article’s quoted author; the “choices” are heavily slanted with a dishonest predisposition. Even were I to consider participating in a “political typology poll,” had I received a phone call with such a ridiculous slant, I would have given them an angry piece of my mind and hung-up given the “choices” in the very first question. As the pole disenfranchises the majority of the voting public by ignoring the possibility of any possible middle ground, the poll is absolutely worthless towards it’s stated purpose.
What is more preposterous, is PEW’s analysis of their asinine “typology” poll, that simply can not be ascertained or supported in reality with the “choices” given in their poll.
PEW has seriously hurt their reputation with this (piece of crap) poll and the unsupportable conclusions of it’s analysis.